Schwab To Cut Fee on U.S. Large-Cap ETF

Charles Schwab Corp. said it plans to trim the expenses on its $4.9 billion Schwab U.S. Large-Cap ETF to 0.03% to bring it in line with a fee cut BlackRock Inc. announced earlier Tuesday on its competing iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF.

The fee cut on the Schwab exchange-traded fund is just one-hundredth of a percentage point, but it is significant as companies fight for the mantle of low-cost leader.

Schwab hasn't yet filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and gave no time frame for its fee cut. "Our intention has always been to be the price leader in the ETF space, and we're going to maintain that," a spokesman for Schwab said.

These are the lowest costs among U.S. ETFs with the exception of one fund that is temporarily waiving charges, according to Thomson Reuters Lipper. BlackRock's iShares Treasury Floating Rate Bond ETF currently has no expenses as the company is waiving its usual 0.15% fee, Lipper said.

BlackRock, the largest global provider of ETFs, Tuesday cut its fees on seven of its iShares ETFs, a move that brought annual expenses to just 0.03% of assets on the $2.7 billion iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF, down from 0.07%. "With today's changes, we are providing investors with broader and more diversified exposures at competitive prices," said Ruth Weiss, head of U.S. iShares product team at BlackRock, in a news release.

Before the planned change announced by Schwab Tuesday, that company had two ETFs with management fees of 0.04%, according to Thomson Reuters Lipper. There are several ETFs, including at least one from Schwab and several from the Vanguard Group at 0.05%, the data firm said.

Write to Daisy Maxey at [e-mail]

Access Investor Kit for "CitiGroup Inc"

Visit http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US1729674242

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 10, 2015 14:35 ET (19:35 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.